LIVING DEAD TAPESTRY
Bosnian mothers have been giving birth to daughters for generations
which keep away from the lustful and smelly bodies of the enemy.
And they give birth to daughters,
who are thrown away into the swollen waters,
due to fear from the maddened eyes of their fathers.
So again during a lunar eclipse,
in the deepest layers of the night Bosnian daughters,
on the banks of Bukovica,
they weave a handkerchief for a loved one,
while prayers are boiling from the lips:
The stars will write a better destiny for us then when we leave this world.
Azemina Krehić was born on October 14, 1992 in Metković, Republic of Croatia. Winner of several international awards for poetry, including: Award of university professors in Trieste, 2019.,„Mak Dizdar“ award, 2020. Award of the Publishing Foundation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2021. „Fra Martin Nedić“ Award, 2022. She is represented in several international anthologies of poetry.
Dance the Dance Slowly: What a Dying Teen Can Teach Us about Living
[Excerpt from Fleury’s book: “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” originally published in Spare Change News]
“Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round? /Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground? /Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? /Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? /You better slow down. /Don’t dance so fast/Time is short/The music won’t last.” So begins the hopeful and emotional offering of an anonymous teenager dying of cancer in a New York hospital with an estimated six months to live.
We have all heard the clichéd phrases “Slow down, life is short” or “Take the time to look around and smell the roses”, but in this case the inherent meaning has been further enhanced by the unpredictable behavior of cancer and the non-committal allotment of time. I too have been exposed to this calamity imposed on humanity known as the “C” word.
Before re-discovering my pressing need to write as a profession, I worked as a health care professional for about ten years. Both fortunately and unfortunately, my last three years was working at the Chilton House, a hospice residence in Cambridge. I say fortunately, because it was my most meaningful learning experience and unfortunately because it was by far the hardest.
For those of you who do not know what a hospice is, it is a place for the terminally ill to make their final exit with peace, dignity and even harmony. But essentially, it is also much more than that. It is also a place for both families and patients respectively to find closure, forgiveness, joy (yes, even joy) and enlightenment.
There are five stages anyone who is dying or experiencing a major loss goes through according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, author of “On Death and Dying”. The Five Stages of Grief are:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
It is written that “Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom). This also includes the death of a loved one, divorce, drug addiction, or infertility. Kübler-Ross also claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two.”
The stage that the dying teen is most likely at the “acceptance” stage. By writing the poem, it is apparent to me that the dying teen is making peace with her condition and is “preparing” for her untimely departure. But her message of hope goes beyond the grave.
I will print her poem in its entirety at the end of this article. But before I do, I am compelled to tell you what I learned in my years as a hospice nurse. The midnight hour had just landed, perched like a crow upon the hospice house comely garden (the crow is said to be a symbol of death).
One of my patients was dying. He was a white professor from Harvard University. Of all the people he knew, I was the only one there, a “black kid” as he said, holding his hands to the end.
And he turned to me and said: “Listen kid. In life, status, education and money are not what matters. What matters is what was true and truly felt and how we treated one another.” After which he died one hour later.
Consequently, this teenager’s compassionate legacy to humanity is the following poem, which makes me feel that we should be kind to each other while we still can because she is embracing us with kindness even as she anticipates taking her final breath. Just like her poem dictates, please read it not in haste, but slowly so that you may absorb its distinctive taste. Her poem is a gift meant to be opened slowly while the music is still playing and you’re still capable of dancing…
Slow Dance
By an anonymous teenager
“Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain Slapping on
the Ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the
fading night? You better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast. Time is short.
The music won’t last. Do you run through each day on the fly?
When you ask how are
you? Do You hear the reply?
When the day is done do you lie in your bed with the next
hundred chores Running through your head?
You’d better slow down, don’t dance so fast.
Time is short. The Music won’t last. Ever told your child
‘We’ll do it tomorrow?’
And in your haste, Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die cause you never had time to call And say hi?
You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short.
The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift thrown away.
Life is not a race. Do take it slower.
Hear the music
Before the song is over.”
Her dying wish is for you to pass this on to as many people as possible. Please help fulfill a last request. In this case, share as many copies of this book as you possibly can!
One woman wrote a letter to the editor thanking me for the article and for sharing this young woman’s poem. She said she slowed down long enough to read it on the train ride home during rush hour and it brought her to tears. She decided to go out dancing with friends that weekend!
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
Jacques Stanley Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Author and Educator. He holds an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts and is currently pursuing graduate studies in the literary arts at Harvard University online. Once on the editing staff of The Watermark, a literary magazine at the University of Massachusetts, his first book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir was featured in and endorsed by the Boston Globe. His second book: It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories is a collection of short fictional stories dealing with the human condition as the characters navigate life’s foibles and was featured on Good Reads. His current book and hitherto magnum opus Chain Letter to America: The One Thing You Can Do to End Racism, A Collection of Essays, Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Multiculturalism explores social justice in America and his latest book,“You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” along with all other previously mentioned titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, The Grolier Bookshop, Goodreads, bookshop, Amazon etc… His CD A Lighter Shade of Blue as a lyrics writer in collaboration with the neo-folk musical group Sweet Wednesday is available on Amazon, iTunes & Spotify to benefit Haitian charity St. Boniface. —
Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses addresses many themes common to her previous book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature, including dislocation, nostalgia, insecurity, and the desire to find a place to belong amid multiple international moves. And, like Places, it employs interesting literary devices: lists, poems, thought bubbles, and a true-false test. They almost read like part I and part II; Landed begins in 2011 where Places ends.
This second memoir, published 13 months after the first, goes even farther with its introspective questioning, though, as a yoga friend of Lang’s suggests that the author’s feeling adrift could be just as much due to struggles within herself as with her bi-national lifestyle and disagreements with her French husband. And we see more of Jennifer’s own work and practices to carve out her own space, within the chapters on yoga poses and classes interspersed between anecdotes of her married life and also within her account of her writing life. That includes teaching memoir writing classes in Israel as well as writing this memoir.
This book humanizes a part of the world that all too often makes headlines for the wrong reasons. It also tells the universal human story of a woman balancing concern for her husband, adult children, and aging parents, who have struggles all their own in Landed.
gone
it’s the first time
since she went
that i’ve been back here
to this outdoor café
in a crowded square
by the busy beach
at the same time
in the late afternoon
i use to come here
twice every week
after i saw her
spent an hour or two
with her
in the nursing home
where she lived
for years
today i came here
at the time i use to
and am feeling sad
as i thought i would be
and thinking lots of her
while having a coffee
enjoying the sun
and reading the paper
i suppose thoughts
and feelings
are expected
coming back here
as i’m missing her
and still find it hard
to believe
mum is gone
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen had a play run in Spain for 4 years.
Im poorly, here purely to supermax lit af pieces of dream boat first in class analysis. And so, this blustery but warm morning, wanting summat more dead, more despotically modern than Ginia Woolfy, i picked up
From my bookshelf, Luke Beesley’s Jam Sticky Visions. I didnt like it at the time i got it, but it met the criteria: prose poems. But it just seemed to glitch on the train thought he was real clever when not. For most, tho, thats just what, thats all poetry is. Pose poems.
Its not to this’n. But if it was, well, his pieces arent good enough for my reply. Beesley’s collection meets the bin back at home, a brown paper Woolworths bag you out of ideas welcome homeland security. And then, i bellyflop that trash onto the stale, malodorous front yard-birds-pecking-through-it dumpster like a babushka against a big, bad bag snatcher. To put a lid on it
Life is too shot – big bang, ‘member? – out the canon to fuck around with global village idiot, middle class pretensions who cant match magnifying glass flints. Stones have better ideals than the fish that pass degrees for and about poets here, their tree. Sun up, sun down voted, they did, for their mess escape to Plato’s outermost caves. Not thermonuclear to them yet over lap it up tick exiled you bygones can each buy a gun safe houses the generic in form elation of the errorist cellular phone it in to my hallowed lover hands it to the red hot LED scope aimed at my chest rattles and cuff links expired here to fore ground like yr ilks circuit elephants run, run, run, run, run, take a dragon, too. Run, run, run, run, run, Gypsy death and – who?
So sLane it herds m’dear widdershins in to con sitter up grate to the verse cloud gathering like a gathering in formation dawn be Lowes haul my cheese deportment of tome travellers form a hoSPITal orderly racing to morn (!) our own Deaths wade like tables off in to the doowopping end ear ring night mayor of this new town square circle the Bast answers back to your no future
*
a neutron star let out its steam roller blind ed by your head light up a joint venture capital city gone to the doggerels of raw shucks
*
Get down stars spin around my hood lights up like mention of a crush garlic to keep the stoker doesnt seam to be any weigh here the bats the baller is knocked up to date the titanic sank out of bounds along the rolex watch tower attack gundagai slimmin’ on dust stacks cant afford the opportunity cost price of winning art disses my pure blood whine of the month this combing harvest cow and
moon you
[Ps cow and moon is a famous ice cream place in sydneys iner west]
*
Get out of my way, or no way at all. Selling sunny days, surreal estate, are you? His face jiggles like a constellation in the wind
ow, a mouth where the fireplace should be, tongue lolling out like an animal onto the floorboards, which are, by the looks of it, solid timber
pine gap.. wtf am i doing back here, your queen dragging this insipid spectacle, this treasure chest of our society behind us, its constant hacking cough
syrup me only d rink g rip tape?
*
even doors stick to the souls of my chews a quiet residential area 51 of then again I saw the planet coming apart at the sentence them to knife in prism effect the Hollywood end launch your self sacrifice Alice to the dragging on a joint venture capitalism is good shit hole in my shoes flutter as I stroke your facebook gives me a psychic shucks
*
I shoot straight as bam boo yr dead head has its lid taken off a coco nut empty as the bar rel of a border disp ute swerves up dust once we’re still the most realpolitik
TOC.. Pluto will wanna gain cointreau of this terminal illness. Our expedition need return like a king to the exposition. In the meantime, en joy ride a Grif ter’s in fern al pil sen er
